1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to the field of online voice response systems and more particular to speech user interfaces for use with online voice response systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Speech systems are systems which can process speech both as input and output. Speech input can be processed into computer recognizable text through well-known speech recognition technology. Similarly, speech output can be generated through well-known speech synthesis technology. One type of speech system, the online voice processing system, has become widespread in recent years. Online voice processing systems are data processing systems which can process speech input and provide audio output, both through an audio user interface. Typical online voice processing systems are deployed in a telephony setting where users interact with the online voice processing system through the use of a telephone.
Generally, online voice processing systems can provide speech prompts to a user as required by the data processing system by speech synthesizing text and transmitting the speech synthesized text over a public switched telephone network (PSTN) to the user. Notwithstanding, online voice processing systems are not limited to use over a PSTN and other online voice processing systems have been integrated with packet switched network voice transport technology, such as Voice over IP (VoIP) technology. In any case, users can respond to online voice processing system speech prompts by “speaking” to the online voice processing system over the PSTN. Online voice processing systems can speech recognize user speech thereby producing speech recognized text which can be processed by the data processing system.
Oftentimes, online voice processing systems prompt users with a list of menu choices. For example, in an online voice processing system for use with a library catalog data processing system, users can be prompted with lists of books which satisfy a searching criteria such as “Fiction” or “Sports”. Human memory limitations can limit the effectiveness of such an online voice processing system, however, where lists include many entries. For example, where the resulting list of books exceeds a dozen entries, in most cases users will not recall each item included in the list. Accordingly, what is needed is a method for compressing the presentation of lengthy lists in an online voice processing system to facilitate selection of list items by users.